§ 63. DANTE, PETRARCA, BOCCACCIO. 567
epoch in his life was Iug.jneetinQ[, as a hoy of nine years, with Beatrice, who was a few months younger than himself, at a festival given in her father's house, where she was tenderly called, as Boccaccio says. Bice. The vision of Beatrice — for there is no record that they exchanged words — entered and filled Dante's soul with an effluence of purity and benignity which cleared away all evil thoughtg.^ After an interval of nine years he saw her a second time, and then not again till, in his poetic dream, he met her in paradise. Beatrice married and died at 24, 1290.
With this vision, th^iew life began for Dante, the vita nuova which he describes in the book of that name. Beatrice's features illuminated his path and her pure spirit was his guide. At the first meeting, so the poet says, " she appeared to me clothed in a most noble color, a modest and becoming crimson, garlanded and adorned in such wise as befitted her very youthful age." The love then begotten, says Charles Eliot Norton, " lasted from Dante's boyhood to his death, keeping his heart fresh, spite of the scorchings of disappointment, with the. springs of perpetual solace. " ^ The last glimpse the poet gives of her was as he saw her at the side of Rachel in the highest region of heaven.
The third in order, underneath her, lo! Rachel with Beatrice, — Par., xxsii. 6.
Had Dante written only the tract against the temporal power of the papacy, the Be monarchia, his name would have been restricted to a place in the list of the pamphleteers of the 14th century. Wis Divine Comedy exalts him to the eminence of the foremost poetic interpreter of the mediseval world. This immortal poem is a mirror of mediaeval Christianity and civilization and, at the same time, a work of universal significance and perennial interest. It sums up the religious concepts of the Middle Age§ and introduces the free critical spirit of the modern world. ^ It is Dante's autobiography and reflects his own experiences: —
^ Vita Nuova, 10, 11. See Scartazzini, Handhiich, p. 193.
2 Vita Ntiova, Norton's trsl., p. 2.
^ Die Komodie ist der Schwanengesang des Mittelalters, zugleich aber auch
568 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
All the pains by me depicted, woes and tortures, void of pity,
On this earth I have encountered — found them all in i'lorence City.i
It brings into view the society of mediieval Italy, a long array of its personages, many of whom had only a local and transient interest. At the same time, the Comedy is the spiritual biography of man as man wherever he is found, in the three conditions of sin, repentance and salvation. It describes a pilgrimage to the world of spirits beyond this life, from the dark forest of temptation, through the depths of despair in hell, up the terraces of purification in purgatory, to the realms of bliss. Through the first two regions the poet's guide is Virgil, the representative of natural reason, and through the heavenly spaces, Beatrice, the type of divine wisdom and love. The Inferno reflects sin and misery; the Purgatorio^ penitence and hope ; the Paradiso, holiness and happiness. The first repels by its horrors and laments ; the second moves by its penitential tears and prayers ; the third enraptures by its purity and peace. Purgatory is an intermediate state, constantly passing away, but heaven and hell will last forever. Hell is hopeless darkness and despair ; heaven culminates in the beatific vision of the Holy Trinity, beyond which nothing higher can be conceived by man or angel. Here are depicted the extremes of terror and rapture, of darkness and light, of the judgment and the love of God. In paradise, the saints are represented as forming a spotless white rose, whose cup is a lake of light, surrounded by innocent children praising God. This sublime conception was probably suggested by the rosedas begeisterte Lied, toelches die Herankunft einer neuen Zeit einleitet. Scartazzini, Dante AUyhieri, etc., p. 530. See Geiger, II. 30 sq. Church, p. 2, calls it " the first Christian poem, the one which opens European literature as the Iliad did that of Greece and Rome." Dante knew .scarcely more than a dozen Greek words, and, on account of its popular language, he called his great epic and didactic poem a comedy, or a village poem, deriving it from kwhtj, villa, without apparently being aware of the more probable derivation from kQ/xos, merry-making.
' Allen Srhmerz, den irh gesiingen, all die Qualen, Greu'^l iind Wnnden Hab' ich schon auf dieser Erden, hab' ich in Florenz gefunden.
— Gehjel : Dante in Verona. One of tlie finest poems on Dante is by Uhland, othei-s by Tennyson, Longfellow, etc.